Famke Janssen, the Dutch model turned actress who played the sultry Bond girl in
GoldenEye (1995), had a career game plan in mind from the moment the 007 adventure
opened.

“I realized that I was falling into a trap — a trap many models prior to me had fallen into —
where they were going to be typecast, where they’d be running around with a gun in most movies and
have no longevity whatsoever,” Janssen recalled by phone from her New York apartment.

GoldenEye, she said, both helped and hindered her in that regard.

“I came out with a name like Famke, and nobody knew what that was, and a character like Xenia
Onatopp,” she said. “So I was Russian or some weird foreigner or whatever — which I am — but I
worked really hard on getting rid of my accent and on trying to go for independent films.”

Janssen held out, appearing in only one small film,
Dead Girl, in the year after
GoldenEye. Then she got busy, starring in the indie feature
City of Industry (1997) and turning up in Woody Allen’s
Celebrity (1998) and Robert Altman’s
The Gingerbread Man (1998), then shifting to more modest fare such as
Love & Sex (2000) and
Circus (2000).

Blockbuster hits soon came, such as
X-Men (2000) and several sequels and spinoffs, and in
Taken (2008) and its sequel,
Taken 2 (2012), as well as the indie features
Eulogy (2004),
The Wackness (2008) and
A Fighting Man (2014).

At 49, with a solid resume spanning two decades, Janssen continues her strategy of seeking
diverse roles.

Janssen also wrote, produced and directed the indie film
Bringing Up Bobby (2011).

Currently, she stars in season two of the Eli Roth series
Hemlock Grove on Netflix, on which she portrays Olivia Godfrey, the fearsome upir — or
half-witch/half-demon — who lords it over the town of Hemlock Grove, the Godfrey Institute and her
family.

The role might seem surprising, given that Janssen doesn’t care for blood-and-guts horror.

“Ironically, me being as naive as I am,” she said, “when I had a conversation about season one
with Eli and one of his producers, Eric Newman, they pitched the idea and said, ‘You basically have
to see it as
Twin Peaks (1990-91), set in a small town, with a murder that takes place and the intrigue
surrounding it.’

“It kind of scares me. I worry about its consequences. I find it hard to stomach when I’m on
set, with all the blood, but still I hung on very much — last season and this season, especially
for my scenes — to that idea of being part of a
Twin Peaks-type setting.”

What does the new season hold for Olivia?

“She’s a somewhat-different Olivia,” the actress said.

“Is she more evil? On some levels. But there’s another side we explore in the second season, so
another question is: How much of what we see in the second season are we going to believe is real
or just used to get what she wants?

“I think, when people are highly manipulative, that line can be really blurred.”